"As you are aware, these annual policy riders – known as the 'Dickey Amendments' and 'Rehberg Amendments' – have in practice prohibited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies falling under the Department of Health and Human Services from conducting publicly funded scientific research on the causes of gun violence or its effects on public health," the letter reads, in part. "There is no valid reason not to fund this research. Earlier this year, Democrats offered an amendment at the Appropriations Committee markup to strike these harmful riders, but it was rejected on a largely partisan vote."

One of the amendments that was referenced in the letter was passed in 1996 and named for Arkansas Republican Jay Dickey.

Huffington Post reported, "Dickey proclaimed victory -- an end, he said at the time, to the CDC's attempts "to raise emotional sympathy" around gun violence. But the agency spent the subsequent years petrified of doing any research on gun violence, making the costs of the amendment cleareeven to Dickey himself.

"If we had somehow gotten the research going, we could have somehow found a solution to the gun violence without there being any restrictions on the Second Amendment," Dickey said. "We could have used that all these years to develop the equivalent of that little small fence."

I don't know how, since the federal government should have never been involved in these studies at taxpayer expense in the first place any more than they should be involved in writing legislation to restrict or regulate arms.

However, fair studies do often undermine gun grabbers at every turn and often demonstrate they are liars, but we also have people in the private sector who provide this information at no cost to the taxpayer.

Arms legislation in Washington, as well as tax payer funded studies should be immediately cut off. There is no need for either.